Sino-Iranica - The Search For Mecca

The Walnut 263
lun nan, It-Si, etc., to be brought to the capital C'an-nan, and to be
planted in the Fu-li Palace £fc %b »lf , founded in commemoration of the
conquest of Nan-yue, whereupon many gardeners lost their lives when
the crops of the li-U proved a failure. 1 Several of his palaces were named
for the fruits cultivated around them: thus there were a Grape-Palace
and a Pear-Palace. Hence the thought that in this exposition of foreign
fruits the walnut should not be wanting, easily impressed itself on the
mind of a subsequent writer. Wu Kun may also have had knowledge
of the Can-K'ien tradition of the Po wu U, and thus believed himself
consistent in ascribing walnuts to the Han palaces. Despite his ana-
chronism, it is interesting to note Wu Kun's opinion that the walnut
came from Central Asia or Turkistan.
It is not probable that the walnut was generally known in China
earlier than the fourth century a.d., under the Eastern Tsin M U
dynasty (2 65-41 o). 2 In the Tsin kun ko min If *$£ 18 ^, a description
of the palaces of the Tsin emperors, written during that dynasty, 3
it is
stated that there were eighty-four walnut-trees in the Hwa-lin Park
1 The palace Fu-li was named for the li-li -j$ $£ (see Sanfu hwan t'u H $§ ^C
gS . Ch. 3, p. 9 b, ed. of Han Wei ts'un lu).
1 Bretschneider (Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 39) asserts that Juglans regia figures
among the plants mentioned passingly in the Nan fan ts'ao mu Swan by Ki Han
|f &, a minister of state under the Emperor Hui j§ of the Tsin dynasty
does not give any particulars. There are only two allusions to the
(a.d. 290-306) . He
walnut, that I am able to trace in this work: in the description of the coco-nut,
the taste of this fruit is likened to that of the walnut; and the flavor of the "stone
chestnut" {li-li ^EJ ££, Aleurites triloba) is compared with that of the same fruit.
We know at present that the book in question contains interpolations
of later date
(see L. Aurousseau, Bull, de I'Ecole franqaise, Vol. XIV, 1914, p. 10); but to these
the incidental mention of the walnut does not necessarily belong, as Ki Han lived
under the Tsin. It is likewise of interest that the walnut is not dealt with as a special
item in the Ts'i min yao lu, a work on husbandry and economic botany, written by
Kia Se-niu |a£ JB> §.&> of the Hou Wei dynasty (a.d. 386-534) ; see the enumeration
of plants described in this book in Bretschneider {op. cit., p. 78). In this case, the
omission does not mean that the tree was unknown to the author, but it means only
that it had then not attained any large economic importance. It had reached the
palace-gardens, but not the people. In fact, Kia Se-niu, at least in one passage
(Ch. 10, p. 48 b, ed. 1896), incidentally mentions the walnut in a quotation from the
Kiao lou ki ^ >}\\ |2 by Liu Hin-k'i £lj /ft J0, where it is said, "The white yuan
tree £j K«l = [evidently |$|